The Uses of Alternative Theories of Educational Change. Phi Delta Kappa Meritorious Award Monograph--No. 1

It is not likely that the schools as presently organized and conducted and with the prevailing model of change employed for their improvement can be redesigned to meet satisfactorily the wide and varied range of expectations for them. The schools are suffering from a confusing array of expectations and a crippling overload of functions. Our present efforts to improve the schools appear to be unproductive because we are almost blindly caught up in a single model of change that stems directly from our Western rational bias. The rational bias of our highly technological culture places purposes before activity in a linear fashion and has produced the research, development, dissemination, and evaluation (RDD&E) model of change that serves rather well when we have a purpose in mind, when we know what it is we want to do or produce. The responsive view embodied in the League of Cooperating Schools model that involves staff dialogue, making decisions, taking action, and endeavoring to evaluate both the process and its outcomes (DDAE) is conducive to probes, open-ended inquiry, and the kind of exploratory activities designed more for finding a course of action than for reaffirming directions already preceived. (Author/IRT)